Death is the New Black

by Dominic Piper

  I take Dixon’s keys and the handcuffs out of my pocket and put them on the floor about a foot apart from each other. If I accidentally kick the keys across the room I’ll have to start all over again, but it’s unlikely I’ll accidentally kick the handcuffs as well.

  Now I have to find Dixon. I stand still and empty my mind. Even though he’s dead, his mass and remaining temperature should give off small atmospheric hints as to where he’s located. This may well be an unreliable technique, but if it works it’ll save me some time.

  After a minute or so, I decide he’s roughly eight or nine paces from where I’m standing, about forty-five degrees to my right. I walk in this direction and trip over him almost immediately, after only four paces. Not perfectly accurate but not bad.

  I pat my hands over his body, grab one of his forearms in both hands and drag him back to where I was standing. He’s incredibly heavy. I realise where I am when I step on the handcuffs. By the time I stop, I’m panting and perspiring from the effort. I put the handcuffs and keys back in my pocket and start to manipulate his corpse.

  Despite the pitch-blackness, I’m quickly able to familiarise myself with all his body parts and his clothing, terrible as I know that sounds. I grab the lapels of his jacket and hoist him up to a sitting position. As an experiment, I let him go to see what will happen. He falls onto his back.

  I grab the back of his collar and hoist him up again. I move behind him and attempt to push his head in between his knees and get it to stay there. Unfortunately, he’s got a bit of a gut and this is causing him to fall backwards towards me all of the time.

  Still squatting behind him, I grab the back of his trousers and yank him up to a better position. I grab his hair and once again try to get his head where I want it. I need him bent double so I can use his corpse to stand on and get to that loft door. I don’t want to have to break his spine to do this, but I will if I have to.

  This time he almost stays where he is. It could be worse; at least he’s got a few hours before rigor mortis sets in.

  I’m going to have to keep him in position with the pressure and weight my body and hope the loft door is where I think it is. I get him into position, holding his head down with my hand. I get a foot on his shoulders and put all of my weight on it, forcing him to stay where I want him. This only gives me a couple of extra feet, but it should be enough.

  I quickly push myself up so I’m standing on his shoulders. He wobbles beneath me. It’s like surfing; corpse surfing. I put my hands up and I feel the cold ceiling against them, but I can’t feel the loft door. I don’t think I can keep this up for long. Just as I’m seconds away from getting wiped out, I feel the edge of the wooden frame of the door. I was about three feet off.

  I jump off Dixon just as he flops backwards and to the side. I drag him to where I think he needs to be and start the whole process over again. This time I’m a bit more confident and even though his body shifts to the left at one point I manage to stay balanced. I can’t imagine what this must look like.

  I hit the loft door with the ball of my hand and it flies open. It’s on hinges, which are to my right. I grab the sides of the frame and pull myself up, leaving Dixon to fall away. I’m not up to this. I feel dizzy and my shoulders and arms blaze with pain.

  Once I’ve hoisted myself up as far as my stomach, I stop for a moment, hanging there with my legs dangling down. Part of me wants to give up, but another part insists that I make the rest of the journey. With a huge effort, I use my elbows to drag myself into the loft area, turn around and close the door behind me.

  I need a stiff drink.

  32

  EIGHT-INCH BLADE

  It takes my eyes roughly ten seconds to get used to the darkness in here. It isn’t as bad as downstairs. I can see my hand in front of my face, which is a start. What light there is, is coming from tiny gaps in between the tiles or slats or whatever the roof of this place is made up of.

  I’m able to stand up without hitting my head on the ceiling. I take a few cautious steps, pressing my feet into the flooring as much as I dare. I don’t want to end up surfing on Dixon’s shoulders again.

  There doesn’t seem to be anything in here apart from dust. There’s a vague smell of oil and pine, but that’s about it. Now I have to get out of here without anyone noticing and without making any noise.

  I walk to the rear so I’m as far away from the main house as I can get. I rub my hands across the wall. It’s made up of rough-surfaced tiles, possibly fired clay, but they feel fragile, the sort that would noisily shatter into a million pieces upon hitting the ground, depending on how hard or soft the ground was. They seem to measure about six inches by twelve.

  I put pressure on one of them with my fingertips. It doesn’t move. I would imagine that they’re hammered into place from the outside, or perhaps they’ve used clips. They probably overlap and if the workmanship was good they’re going to be difficult to remove.

  There’s only one thing for it. With my left hand I find what seems to be roughly the centre of one of the tiles. I clench my right hand into a fist, and with as much ki as I can manage, execute a hard, straight punch from just over a foot away.

  Well, that hurt. I feel the impact point on the tile with my fingers. There’s a fracture straight down the centre. OK. It just needs a little more force. I pull back my fist and whack it again. That time there is a little more give and I hear a loud crack. Have to be careful with the noise, but I doubt they’d have heard that from the house.

  The tile is now in four pieces. I manage to pull it apart, carefully placing each piece by my feet. At last I can see outside. It’s become moderately dark now, but there are external lights illuminating the grounds. All that’s visible is a lawn and assorted shrubs in large pots.

  I can see now that each tile is attached to a long strip of wood with small black metal clips. Slowly and quietly, I start to remove the clips, the wooden strips and the tiles until there’s a huge hole in the side of the roof, big enough for me to get through.

  I lean out and look down. It’s difficult to see clearly, but I think it’s just grass. This is good; it means I won’t make any noise when I land. I think I’m about ten to twelve feet up. I close my eyes and visualise the jump. It’ll take about two seconds to get to the ground. I intend to land about four feet away from the wall and attempt to do a forward breakfall to lessen the energy of the impact and hopefully remain undamaged. The last thing I want now is a sprained ankle or broken leg or both.

  I can feel the wind on my face. I can smell lavender. I’m aware that my pulse has increased, but that’s understandable. No more pontificating. I’m in a hurry. I grab the tiles on each side and project myself forward into the darkness.

  *

  The moment I feel my feet make contact with the ground I roll forward to lessen the impact, much the same as if I’d come down by parachute or been thrown by a martial arts instructor. I take the breakfall down the length of my right arm and in a diagonal across my back until I’m up on my feet again. I manage to avoid grunting as the wind is knocked out of me.

  I stay still and listen. No noise, no voices. All clear. I turn around slowly. I can see the house. I’ve got to get in there. I walk about fifteen feet to my right, to an area where the garden lights are not illuminating everything so strongly.

  I wonder if Jennison has live-in staff. There was no evidence of this when I was in the house. If I was him, I’d just have people coming here at set hours during the day. I take a few steps towards the house until I can see the main entrance. This is lit up, as are most of the rooms on the ground floor.

  It’s been maybe fifteen minutes since I was inside. It’s unlikely everyone is in the same place as they were when I left, but I can’t worry about that.

  Listening out for noises and movement, I make my way to what seems to be the rear of the house. I gulp some more fresh air into my lungs. I have to keep on my toes. There are aggressive crazy people in there with guns.

 
I can see a large kitchen, but there’s no direct entrance into it. I continue walking, keeping roughly twenty feet away and using the shadows to conceal my presence. There’s a door to the far left of the kitchen. Not illuminated, but not open. I can’t work out what it’s for. Maybe it’s a boot room of some sort. Well, I don’t have time to speculate any further. I take a final look and listen and head toward it.

  I crouch down and take Dixon’s keys out of my pocket. There’s a very faint sound of music coming from somewhere. I can’t tell whether it’s a stereo or the television.

  This door has one lock. It’s a silver knob lock. I’m amazed. Jennison should know better than this. He should have asked Shortass for advice. It’s a fatal mistake to use these on outside doors. All a professional burglar would need would be a hammer. One hard strike and the whole thing’s on the floor.

  I don’t have a hammer on me and besides, I can’t afford the noise. I use one of Dixon’s flat burglar tools and the thing is unlocked in fifteen seconds.

  I open the door slowly, waiting for an alarm to go off. There’s nothing. I push it open, step inside and close it quietly behind me. I’m in a small room filled with white goods. There’s a washing machine, a spin dryer, a drying cabinet and a big freezer. There are shelves stacked with cloths and detergents and in the corner a whole area filled with mops, buckets and the like. The smell in here is harsh and acrid and I can feel my eyes burning. I recognise the yellow bucket that Shortass used to mop up Dixon’s blood and urine.

  I come out of this room into a section of hallway. I attempt to orientate myself. This is not exactly the back of the house. It was more to the left-hand side if we call the main entrance the front. That means to get to the living room, you’d have to turn right at this point and then take a left. The living room would then be straight ahead and at a right angle to the front door, looking out onto the lake, with the conservatory in the way.

  Unfortunately, I can’t see any way of getting up to the first floor to look for Sara. There must be only one staircase and I could see that from the living room. Besides, I’m not exactly sure what room she’s in, only that it’s above the living room and to the right, and that may not be altogether accurate.

  I stand still and listen to the house noise. There’s definitely a television on somewhere and it’s downstairs. From the gunfire, I think it must be a film.

  I zone that out and try to capture whatever else is around. The first thing I pick up on is the stridulous breathing of Jennison’s mother, sucking the oxygen down. It’s coming from my left-hand side, so she can’t have moved since I left.

  I can hear a male voice. I’m guessing that Jennison’s still in there with her, possibly with Shortass in attendance. I have to remember that Isolda is somewhere in the house, and despite her entreaties to her father would almost certainly alert everyone if she spotted me wandering around unattended.

  There are two fair sized rooms to my right. One of them is a large empty dining room and the other is some sort of general utility room, like a cross between a lounge, a diner and a games room. The door is partially closed. I can feel that there’s somebody in there.

  I walk up to the door as quietly as possible. It would be easier if this place was carpeted, but it’s all terracotta tiles. Still, I’m wearing crêpe soles, so my walk is relatively silent and I’m pressing down firmly with each step I take to cut the noise out completely.

  The door is about six inches open. Standing on the other side of the hallway, my back to a wall, I can see a bookshelf stacked with gardening books, a heavy-looking cast iron oven, the edge of a smoked glass dining table and a gigantic television screen, which is currently switched off.

  On a table next to the television are two Xbox controllers, a white PS4 console and a stack of games. There’s a small sink with a coffee percolator on a table next to it. I can somehow imagine Shortass and Wide Chest in here playing Grand Theft Auto V together until the early hours. There’s also a transparent retro-looking cocktail cabinet full of drinks.

  I hear someone cough, followed by a brief rustle of paper. It’s Wide Chest, I just know it. I can smell his odour and I can feel his bad vibes. He’s a physically strong murderous psychopath with a gun, so this has to be fast, silent and possibly lethal.

  As soon as I open this door, he’ll be on full alert and will let everyone else know that something’s up. Then he’ll probably try to subdue, maim or kill me. Maybe all three. I assume he’s sitting at the smoked glass table. That would make him six or seven feet away from the door. For me to go in that room would be madness. I’ve got to bring him to me.

  I cross over the hallway and stand flat against the wall, next to the section of door where the handle is. When he materialises in a moment, he’ll have to grab the door handle on his side and pull it towards him. At that point, I’ll have exactly one second in which to act. I just hope he doesn’t come out with a gun in his hand; that would really make things a little difficult.

  I hit the door just once with the back of my fist, loud enough to get his attention, quiet enough so nobody else hears it, fast enough so he didn’t see me do it, but not so powerfully that it makes the door swing open. I’m so skilled that it surprises me sometimes, it really does.

  I hear him sigh and put his newspaper down. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he says. I wonder who he thinks it is?

  The moment he opens the door, I swing around so we’re face to face for a fraction of a second. The look he gives me is a stunned mix of astonishment and stupidity. I slap my hand on the side of his head and slam it sideways into the doorjamb, following this up with a head butt to his nose and a knife hand strike into the front of his throat, shattering the cartilage.

  I push him back into the room and close the door quietly behind us. He falls heavily and I kick him as hard as I can in the balls while he’s down. He attempts to say something, probably an objection of some sort, but it’s difficult with a crushed throat, which I why I did it.

  I reach into his pocket and pull out the P226, using it to pistol whip him into delirium, then a minute later cuff him to one of the legs of the oven. I check the gun over and it’s fully loaded. I flick the safety off and shove it into my waistband. One down, four to go. Yes, I’m counting Jennison’s mother.

  I open the door, walk into the hallway and stand and listen. I can still hear a film that someone’s watching, but can’t quite place where it would be. There was a big television in the living room, so I guess it has to coming from there.

  To my left is a small toilet and next to that a room with more cleaning stuff. Almost opposite that is a kitchen. I can hear a kettle boiling, quiet piano music and someone moving around. I take the gun out of my waistband and point it towards the floor, gripping my right wrist with my left hand. If I remember correctly, the P226 takes a 9mm round. That would be bad enough in a real combat situation, but for close range shooting in a place like this it would be devastating.

  I sidle along the wall, listening all the while. I don’t think there’s more than one person in there. When I’m three steps away from the door I can smell perfume; heady, musky, catches at the back of your throat. It’s Isolda.

  I take a deep breath and swing through the door, arms bent, holding the gun close to my body, index finger down the frame, both hands around the grip, thumbs meeting. She’s got her back to me. She doesn’t notice. Then I see she’s caught my reflection in the window. She puts down the mug she was holding, fiddles around a bit and turns to face me, leaning back against the surface, hands behind her back, chest thrust forward.

  She’s wearing a black cotton t-shirt and baggy white jeans. She isn’t wearing a bra. She sees where my eyes are going and smiles sweetly.

  ‘Are you going to shoot me, Daniel?’

  ‘Scream and you’ll find out.’

  I take a step back, close the door with my foot, then take a few steps to my right, still keeping the gun on her. She’s still hot as hell but I don’t trust her anymore. Maybe I never did. She pus
hes herself away from the surface and walks slowly towards me. I don’t like it that she has her hands behind her back. It might be that it makes her breasts look more crudely provocative; it might be that she’s hiding something.

  ‘You’ve heard me scream before. I thought you liked it.’

  ‘Shut up. Where is everybody?’

  ‘I can’t have you hurting Dad. It wouldn’t be right. Not after all he’s done for me.’

  ‘He’s abducted an innocent woman and just had a man killed, right there in your living room.’

  She shrugs. ‘He can’t help himself. It’s just business.’

  ‘Bullshit. This isn’t business, this is all about you. None of those things would have happened if it wasn’t for you.’

  Her eyes flash provocatively and she turns the flirtatiousness in her voice up to eleven on the dial.

  ‘But I like those things, Daniel. I always have. I tried not to, but I failed. I liked hearing the stories about Dad that my grandmother told me. It sounded exciting. I liked hearing about Dad’s friends. It was like Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Does that sound silly? It’s why I’ve always gone for a certain sort of man. It’s why I liked you. I could feel it in you straight away; that ruthlessness, that danger, that callousness. It’s intoxicating. It makes me go a little crazy. I couldn’t work you out, Daniel. I still can’t. It’s as if you’re hiding something big about yourself, but that makes me even crazier. The fact that you won’t let me in is a turn on.’

  She’s moving towards me, one slow step at a time.

  ‘At the same time, I got a buzz from aiming a gun at you. I know that sounds mad. I like having power over other people. It doesn’t matter how. It makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel good. I had power over Sara. She thought she was in charge, but really it was me. Put the gun down and we’ll go and talk to Dad. He won’t hurt you. I’ve told him not to. We can sort this out. Sara’s not important. She never was. We mustn’t be enemies, Daniel. We’ve got to be in this together, otherwise everything will fall apart. You don’t want me to go to prison, do you?’